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Just before POTUS spoke at the museum, Smithsonian secretary David Skorton told the pool that POTUS particularly enjoyed the exhibit on Muhammad Ali. Another official explained: "He's a big fan of fighting."

Lonnie Bunch told the pool that POTUS had shown a keen interest in everything he saw, including Nat Turner's Bible.

Later, back at the White House, Ben Carson spoke to your pooler –

Carson's overall reaction to the visit: "It was very nice. A nice educational thing. The kind of thing that I think helps bring people together."

Carson on POTUS's reaction to the Carson exhibit: "He liked that one, yeah. But I think he was very favourably impressed with the whole thing. It's really a very eye opening experience, something I hope that everybody will take advantage of."

Carson on POTUS's reaction to the Muhammad Ali exhibit: "Well, you know, Muhammad Ali was a very special man. Intellectually he was a very significant individual who really had, I think, a lot of deep understandings of what was going on. So, it was good."

Carson on Rep Hakeem Jeffries describing Steve Bannon as a "a stone cold racist and a white supremacist sympathiser": "I just look forward to the time when we can actually concentrate on solving our problems and not trying to destroy each other."

Carson on critics who said POTUS's request to journalist April Ryan at last week's press conference implies that he must assume all black people know each other: "I don't think that was the implication at all. I think what he was signalling was a willingness to discuss things, 'cos that's the only way that we ever resolve our differences, is if we actually sit down and openly discuss them. You usually find you're not nearly as far apart as you think you are."